Rep. Marsha Blackburn to StemExpress: “A subpoena is not a suggestion”

Last month, the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives declared StemExpress, a middleman tissue procurement company, in contempt of Congress. The company has been embroiled in the controversy involving Planned Parenthood since last summer, when Pro-Life citizen journalists at the Center for Medical Progress exposed StemExpress’ partnership with dozens of abortion mills. StemExpress paid abortion businesses (namely, Planned Parenthood) for the parts of children whose bodies had been butchered in abortion. StemExpress then sold those body parts to researchers at a markup.

The Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, which is a congressional subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee impaneled to investigate the abortion industry’s trafficking of aborted baby body parts, ordered StemExpress to surrender documentation of business dealings with Planned Parenthood – documents StemExpress says they submitted. But no-nonsense Pro-Life panel chairwoman Marsha Blackburn (R—TN) took to social media to set the record straight:

When the Select Investigative Panel was formed, then-Speaker of the House John Boehner invested Representative Blackburn with subpoena power. Blackburn has leveraged this power to obtain eye-opening documentation of the hush-hush business of buying, selling, and re-selling aborted children. But StemExpress is still holding some of those documents close to their vest – even after Blackburn gave them months and multiple chances to cooperate. Because of StemExpress’ failure to comply with the subpoena, Blackburn held the business in contempt of Congress – a move that prompted a Democrat minority walkout during Panel proceedings last month. But Blackburn reminded the minority and the public that “a subpoena is not a suggestion,” reaffirming the rationale behind holding StemExpress in contempt.

In an undercover video, StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer told Pro-Life journalists that researchers often asked for baby “limbs, but no hands and feet need to be attached… Make it so that we don’t know what it is.” However, Dyer admits, “But we know what it is… And their lab techs freak out and have meltdowns.” In other words, StemExpress further butchered the babies after Planned Parenthood killed them to ensure that each part was saleable and presentable to researchers.

CMP leader David Daleiden did not mince words when calling out the anti-Life minority on the Panel:

The [Panel] has already discovered probable cause that Planned Parenthood and StemExpress profited off of baby body parts together, used fraudulent and invalid consent forms to pressure patients to agree to body parts harvesting, and violated the HIPAA privacy rights of tens of thousands of pregnant women. Planned Parenthood’s political cronies on the Panel minority, whom Planned Parenthood funds with tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, made clear today how terrified they and their abortion industry masters are of the full details being revealed about Planned Parenthood’s criminal partnership with StemExpress.

Amid the highly-publicized imbroglio with Planned Parenthood, StemExpress severed their lucrative relationship with the abortion behemoth. But the company could not sever themselves from the bad press that comes in the wake of trafficking dead children.